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[tooljoe]

I scratched the plastic lens on mine at work and the shadows where starting to bother me so i decided to make my own piece out of picture flame glass that was going to the trash. the pictures should speak for themselves fo the most part.




this tow pics basically illustrate how i traced the plastic lens on to the glass (represented by the paper) and used a straight edge with a glass cutter to cut the circle piece. i just cut around as close as possible to the line and then sanded it down to the inside of the line.




this is the end results... assembled everything back and no more shadows (caused by the scratches on the plastic lens)

[anadevi]

Thanks for sharing the idea. I think I might do the same.

[tooljoe]

no problem. the whole deal took me about 15-20 minutes tops. of course, i already had the tools and materials with me. but it is not really that complicated to do. i may write a step by step process in how to cut the glass easy some other day... and then how to sand it down with a drill and sand paper.

[tooljoe]

so i had some time today to write down the easy process to cut the glass... again, images speak louder than words...

the fist thing to do is to cut as close as possible to the line... in the pic, the center of the cutting wheel is as close to the inner side of the line...



this is how the first cut looks like...



and this is the second cut... it was easier for me to cut counter clockwise.
 


this is the end result after all this cutting...



you can then sand away the rest with a fine sand paper in your electric sander... trying to not go past the inner side of the line (well you have too, by about .4 MM)... or if you don't have an electric sander, but would not mind taking a little longer with care and patience.... you can wrap sandpaper around you drill chuck and grind away... i found it that 100 grit paper flakes the glass but it shaves more of it fast... while a finer grit does not... of course right... but it does not matter if it flakes a little because the lens cover will cover that...